Welcome To Statistics Explained

Statistics Explained, your guide to European statistics.
Statistics Explained is an official Eurostat website presenting statistical topics in an easily understandable way. Together, the articles make up an encyclopedia of European statistics for everyone, completed by a statistical glossary clarifying all terms used and by numerous links to further information and the latest data and metadata, a portal for occasional and regular users.

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New / updated articles

The data in this article show the most recent annual rates of change for the euro area headline inflation and its main components issued by Eurostat. The figures presented are early estimates of euro area inflation. More ...

This article analyses labour market participation in the European Union (EU), broken down by sex and age, on the basis of the results of the EU Labour force survey (EU-LFS). In 2014, the number of inactive persons as a percentage of the working age population in the EU-28 reached a new low of 27.7 %, continuing the downward trend of the previous years. This positive development is largely due to the increased participation of women in the labour market. More ...

The production index for construction is a business cycle indicator which measures monthly changes in the price adjusted output of construction. The construction production index corresponds to the industrial production index but covers (parts of) NACE section F. More ...

Did you know that....

In 2013, the highest fertility rates were reported by France (1.99 live births per woman) and Ireland (1.96). In contrast, the lowest fertility rates were recorded in Poland (1.29), Spain (1.27) and Portugal (1.21). Read more...

Focus on

The dependency of the European Union (EU) on energy imports, particularly of oil and more recently of gas, forms the backdrop for policy concerns relating to the security of energy supplies. This article looks at the production of primary energy in the EU and, as a result of the shortfall between production and consumption, the EU’s increasing dependency on energy imports from non-member countries. Indeed, more than half (53.2 %) of the EU-28’s gross inland energy consumption in 2013 came from imported sources.

Main statistical findings

Primary production

Production of primary energy in the EU-28 totalled 790 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) in 2013. This continued the generally downward development observed in recent years, with 2010 the main exception as production rebounded after a relatively strong fall in 2009 that coincided with the financial and economic crisis. When viewed over a longer period, the production of primary energy in the EU-28 was 15.4 % lower in 2013 than it had been a decade earlier. The general downward development of EU-28 primary energy production may, at least in part, be attributed to supplies of raw materials becoming exhausted and / or producers considering the exploitation of limited resources uneconomical.

In 2013, the highest level of primary energy production among the EU Member States was in France, with a 17.1 % share of the EU-28 total, followed by Germany (15.3 %) and the United Kingdom (13.9 %). Compared with a decade earlier the main change was the fall in the share of the United Kingdom, down from 26.2 % — see Table 1. The only other Member States whose shares fell over this period were Denmark (-0.9 percentage points) and Lithuania (-0.4 percentage points). In absolute terms, the largest expansions in the production of primary energy during the 10 years to 2013 were registered in the Netherlands (up 11.0 million toe), Italy (9.1 million toe) and Sweden (4.3 million toe). By contrast, the production of primary energy in the United Kingdom fell by 135.4 million toe, while Germany (-14.3 million toe) and Denmark (-11.6 million toe) were the only other EU Member States to report double-digit contractions in their levels of production.